On August 16, the 2022 and 2023 technical regulations were published, updated after the last meeting of the World Motorsport Council. Several aerodynamic innovations, starting with the new plank wear control procedures starting from the next stage of Spa, with a potential impact on the ground clearance adopted by the teams and on the load released from the bottom. In 2023, however, the aerodynamic changes introduced with the declared purpose of stemming the porpoising phenomenon will come into force to better guarantee the safety and health of the pilots. The outer edge of the bottom will be raised by 15 mm, while the minimum section of the diffuser will be enlarged, areas where those critical flow conditions that trigger aerodynamic rebound are experienced.
However, the technical corrections will not only concern the bottom area, but also the front end. Leafing through the 2023 regulation you can see how they have been rewritten Articles 3.9.3.e, 3.9.3.f And 3.9.3.g, points in which the connection surfaces between the four profiles of the front wing and the external vertical strips of the endplates are regulated. The Federation intervened to clarify the initial intentions, imposing new geometric constraints to prevent the exploitation of gray areas and interpretations that conflict with the spirit of the regulations.
Such changes often arise from the FIA’s desire to stem solutions or phenomena seen on the track contrary to the intentions that guided the drafting of the regulations. It is therefore likely that the interventions to the various points of Article 3.9.3 derive from the intention of limit front wing geometries such as that introduced by Mercedes starting from the Miami Grand Prix. The W13 in fact presents a shrewd way of connecting the flaps and the endplates, such as to induce the generation of vortices parallel to the car body, extremely precious on the previous generation of cars but which became a rare commodity with the 2022 regulations. seal the low pressure area of the underbody from the external environment at the rear, increasing load generation.
The proliferation of vortices in the past had progressively led to the degeneration of the cleanliness of the wake of the cars, with consequent aerodynamic disturbances for the pursuing car and difficulties in close duels. The amendments to the 2023 regulations therefore go in the direction of preserving the “racing ability” of the current single-seaters, implementing a crackdown on solutions such as the front wing of the W13. In the updated regulations on the other hand, there are no corrective measures for the rear wingsuggesting the approval of the FIA towards the peculiar geometries introduced by Aston Martin to its endplates at the Budapest, which would therefore not seem to compromise the wake and the load for the pursuing car.
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